In October we celebrated National Farm to School Month by visiting the team at Springfield Public Schools. Andrew Stratton, General Manager for Home Grown Springfield’s food services partner Sodexo, gave us a tour of their Culinary Nutrition Center where we saw firsthand how they use fresh, local ingredients to make school meals for Springfield students.
A Look Inside Springfield’s Culinary Nutrition Center
During our visit to the 62,000 square foot facility, mac and cheese sauce, empanadas, buffalo chicken, breakfast sandwiches, and more were being prepared by the team to be served at schools throughout Springfield. Each day the staff at the Culinary Nutrition Center makes roughly 22,000 lunches and 21,000 breakfasts. These meals are then sent out to Springfield School District’s 65 schools.
Sourcing local ingredients for such a large volume of food is no easy task. The Sodexo team has found partnerships throughout the region that make it possible. The dough for the empanadas is made in-house using locally produced flour. The cheese in the mac and cheese sauce came, in part, from Narragansett Creamery in Providence, RI. These local contributions are standard for Home Grown Springfield. The goal is for 25% of ingredients served to students to be locally produced in the New England region.
Nutrition and Student Success: The Role of Local Food
For Andrew’s team, creating positive experiences for students and setting them up for success throughout the day are major goals. Local ingredients are a big part of that. To continue growing and improving, the team took a closer look at meal participation and nutrition. “We’re feeding the students, but are we feeding them something nutritious? We’re trying to offer them items that they’ll enjoy and that will get them ready for the classroom.”
Their hard work is clearly paying off. This September, breakfast and lunch participation in Springfield schools was up to 81% of all students. Andrew and the team are ultimately aiming for 90% participation to essentially eliminate the student hunger gap. “We’re reaching that by having high quality food and making things better and better.”
Today, “the student body in Springfield are eating a lot healthier, a lot less preservatives,” according to Andrew. They have breakfast options available in the classroom, and plenty of options for nutritious and filling lunch in the cafeteria. Some schools, like Springfield Central High School, are even offering grab and go dinners for students.
We got a peek at some of the Culinary Nutrition Center’s final products in action at Springfield Central High School where their mac and cheese bar was on the menu for lunch. Homemade cheese sauce and pulled pork from the Culinary Nutrition Center, plus green beans and local milk made for a tasty lunch that the students were excited about. Nicholas, a student at Springfield Central, said he enjoys having “good quality hot meals that change everyday,” and appreciates knowing that local ingredients are used to make them.
Reducing Food Waste and Supporting Local Farms
The local connection doesn’t stop there, though. The staff at the facility do their best to minimize food waste, but sometimes things are left behind. Instead of throwing this food waste away where it would end up in a landfill, waste from the Culinary Nutrition Center is sent to Barstow’s Dairy just down the road in Hadley, MA.
Denise Barstow at Barstow’s Longview Farm, explained to us just how the process works on the farm.
“Our digester runs on cow manure and local food waste. Originally digesters operated only from manure and were typically only feasible for larger farms to implement. Our digester was one of the first in the country to also use food waste. This makes it feasible for small and medium farms to have this technology on-farm. The food waste that we receive from Springfield helps our digester run. The digester produces renewable electricity for our community (enough to power 1,600 homes!), generates heat for our on-farm systems and homes, and produces a chemical-free fertilizer for our 500 acres of crop fields.”
Completing the cycle, the milk from their cows is then processed to travel back to the students at Springfield schools as milk, cheese, or other ingredients used at the Culinary Nutrition Center.
Overall, Denise says the partnership with Springfield has been incredibly beneficial to their farm, especially in terms of sustainability and additional revenue. Adding local food waste from Springfield’s Culinary Nutrition Center “is an important opportunity for New England dairies to have an additional revenue stream amidst always changing milk markets, and it helps to offset our carbon hoofprint. We have seen enhanced soil health, increased crop yield, and we have decreased our chemical fertilizer usage.”
Connecting Students to Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems
Connecting students to agriculture is equally important to Denise and her family at Barstow’s Longview Farm. “The more people understand about agriculture, the more they will protect it. New England dairy farms preserve open space essential for wildlife habitats, clean air and water, climate resilience, and food security. We produce local, always in-season, affordable nutrition for our community.” Barstow’s Longview Farm is proud to be part of that bigger picture – producing local, affordable nutrition and green energy while also preserving the land for future generations. “I hope that the Springfield students and our community agree, these are things worth protecting, and we are grateful for their role in keeping our farm farming.”
The Culinary Nutrition Center truly represents a pillar of the community. Not only is the whole operation working with Barstow’s Longview Farm to be as environmentally conscious as possible, they also offer cooking classes to students and parents, internships for high school and college students, and attend family-friendly events where they provide samples of their food to the community for free.
Learn more about how dairy farmers like the Barstow’s are using waste products to create energy.
